ON THE OCCASION OF HITLER'S BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR, I am presenting passages from Joseph Goebbels' speech on the eve of the Fuehrer's last earthly birthday on April 20, 1945. Everyone knew that final disaster was closing in and Goebbels' had the unenviable task of saying words to the nation that would honor the 56-year-old Leader and encourage and fortify the people without raising false hopes. He did his usual eloquent job and his speech went out on the airwaves that evening and was printed in the German newspapers the next day. Here is much but not all of the speech.
German citizens!
At the moment of the war when — so it seems — all forces of hate and destruction have been gathered once again, perhaps for the final time, in the west, the east, the southeast, and the south, seeking to break through our front and give the death blow to the Reich, I once again speak to the German people on the eve of 20 April about the Führer, just as I have done every year since 1933. That has happened at good and bad times in the past. But never before did things stand on such a knife’s edge, never before did the German people have to defend their very lives under such enormous danger, never before did the Reich have to draw on its last strength to protect its threatened self.
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